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Okay, here's the scuttlebutt.
As some of you know, my wife, Vicki, is a very fine classical flutist.
On a trip to NY to visit the relatives, a trip was arranged to go down
to the city and see Ian (who had been the Special Guest at the second
Tronto Clambake in 2001). They were going to spend some time playing
duet (he really is a good flute player, too). I brought my brother
along because he wanted to meet Ian and get some albums signed.
My brother, a former audio engineer, has always been fascinated on how
they got such huge gain (and no distortion) on that massive pitch
sweep in "Epitaph", so naturally, he start asking Ian questions about
that and the rest of the album. So here are some tidbits from that
conversation.
There was a calliope in a corner of the studio and naturally the boys
started fooling around with it. Only problem was, it was really flat.
That's why the calliope part in ITCOTCK is in a different key. Not
being keyboard players, I guess they were not good at transposing or
just decided to go with the flow. Anyway, the section was played by
McDonald on the top end with Giles playing the sustained notes on the
bottom on the second time through. Ian played the calliope the rest of
the way by himself.
For "Schizoid Man", that is the calliope at the beginning, too. It's
McDonald and Giles again, just sweeping the flats of their hands over
the keys. Being air driven and with a pretty poor air supply to begin
with, the instrument would just sort of whistle and groan. They
thought this sounded cool for the beginning of the album -- and I
think they were right.
Some other things of interest:
∗ "Schizoid Man" was done in one take, live off the floor and then the
second sax solo overdubbed in one. Pretty impressive!
∗ "Epitaph", on the other hand took 16 hours to record. They couldn't
get the sound and feel right. It was also recorded last which is why
the mellotron sounds different than the other two songs on the album
that use it. They found a way to make it sound better. It was recorded
from a HiWatt amp (not a direct line to the board) and then run
through a plate reverb. The sweep part was played by McDonald and
Fripp and the mellotron was double-tracked pretty well throughout.
∗ The album was done on an 8-track machine with numerous bounce downs,
a la the method used by the Beatles.
There you have it!
Rick